Lars Von Trier's Nymphomaniac To Be Released As Not One, Not Two But Four Separate Films

There’s always something special about a Lars von Trier film. And I don’t just mean that his pictures are great, though they certainly are, but I mean that there’s always “a thing.”

Dancer in the Dark, for example, cut together sequences shot on up to a hundred cameras simultaneously; Dogville took place in a black box theatre style “illustration” of its location; Manderville twisted what we’d seen in Dogville, even switching old cast around to new roles, and new cast around to old roles; The Boss Of It All (allegedly) used an automated camera system to frame shots and select focus.

There seem to be two things with Nymphomaniac, his next picture.

First of all, there’s going to be two chapters, each given its own full length film. Producer Peter Aalbæk Jensen told Screen Daily:

We are making two films. It is a big operation. I personally hope that we should be ready for Cannes next year. We will shoot both and edit both – and we want to finish both at the same time.

And, for the second “thing,” there’s to be two versions of each film. The subject matter of the film is to be “the erotic life of a woman from the age of zero to 50,” and as we’ve previously heard, there are to be both hardcore and softcore versions shot.

Which is to say, Von Trier is making a pornographic film, in the sense that he’ll be showing genuine sex acts on screen, but there will also be a “softer” version.

According to Jensen, this alteration is likely to be acheived through on-screen blurring:

We will probably blur the central points of the human body for the release worldwide but we will probably make one unblurred that will be for screening maybe in Cannes.

And hopefully beyond Cannes.

Charlotte Gainsbourg is said to be starring in the film, recounting her story to a man played by Stellan Skarsgard. Jensen would not comment on this casting at this time, but did say that there would be some “big names” in the film.

In respect of the film’s visual style and camera stratagems, it seems that Nymphomaniac is to feature the same contrasts that we saw in Antichrist and Melancholia. Jensen said:

Some will be Dogme hand-held and some will have very carefully made photography, crane shots and beautiful images. It will be very much mixed.